iPhoto, the Apple vetted image browsing application is not the best choice if you need to deal with very large image libraries or if you want to edit the IPTC or EXIF metadata associated to a file. Photo Mechanic is an user friendly image viewer that can help you deal with these details, and more.

Browse your entire disk for images and quickly preview thumbnails for each file

The Photo Mechanic app is focused on speed and its ultimate goal is to help you efficiently manage your photos collection. Since the app includes batch processing capabilities, you will be able to work with groups of images, hence reducing the processing time.

Due to its neatly organized user interface, working with Photo Mechanic is extremely intuitive: on the left side you can view the Navigator panel that provides access to various locations on your drive, while on the right you can preview thumbnails for the images included in each folder.

Preview and edit the metadata associated to your images

Moreover, Photo Mechanic’s top toolbar allows you to adjust the thumbnail size, includes a search bar, enables you to sort the images by different criteria, and allows you to upload the selected files to a server or to burn them on a CD. On the other hand, the bottom toolbar allows you to rate the files, or assign them a label color.

Via the Photo Mechanic Info panel that is generated for each image, you have the opportunity to both visualize and edit the IPTC and EXIF metadata content. As a result, you can add a small description, a headline, keywords, details about the image copyright, location information, and much more.

On the whole, Photo Mechanic proved to be extremely useful during our tests while browsing a large photo collection, and while batch rotating, cropping, resizing, and renaming large sets of images.

In addition, Photo Mechanic can also help you sort your photos with ease and only keeping the best looking ones in your image library, as well as manage the pictures’ metadata very easily.

What’s New in Version 5.0 Build 18040: ● Ingest now ignores the new ImgSaver.bin le created by some Canon cameras. ● Added support for Canon 5D Mk IV, M5, 1300D, and PowerShot G7 X Mk II, Olympus E-M1 Mk II and ● E-PL8 models for parsing Maker Notes. ● Added more columns and editing capabilities for Artwork or Object metadata in the IPTC dialogs. ● Warnings that appear when opening a read-only media such as a DVD-ROM can now be disabled by ● setting DISABLE_READ_ONLY_WARNINGS to ON in your PMDebug.txt le. Enabling a debug ag is ● documented here: http://wiki.camerabits.com/en/index.php?title=PMDebug ● Warnings that appear when opening a camera card when your preference is set to not allow modi cations on a camera card can be disabled by setting DISABLE_CAMERA_CARD_WARNINGS to ON in your PMDebug.txt le. Enabling a debug ag is documented here: http://wiki.camerabits.com/en/index. php?title=PMDebug ● Tab-Separated Value text les (*.TSV) may be chosen in the le picker brought up by clicking the Load button in the Structured Keywords dialog/panel. ● Added support for DXO Optics Pro settings les (they are associated with their base le and are copied/ moved/renamed along with the main image le.) Users who don’t use DXO Optics Pro can disable the extension by setting IGNORE_EXTENSION_DOP ON in the PMDebug.txt le. Documented here: http://wiki.camerabits.com/en/index.php?title=PMDebug ● Fixed a hang that could occur when loading snapshots in the Live Ingest dialog. ● Fixed a hang that occurs when deleting metadata that is malformed. ● Made it possible to open the snapshot menu via keypress rather than mouse click only.